Republican volunteers and staffers fill a phone-banking room in the GOP’s Aurora field office to support candidates including U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, shown in upper right corner making calls, on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Jon Murray, The Post)

Mike Coffman is about as confident ahead of Tuesday’s election as a congressman can be when he represents one the nation’s most competitive U.S. House districts. For that, the three-term Republican incumbent — challenged by Democrat Andrew Romanoff this year — can thank volunteers such as Alex Mowery.

The 16-year-old high school junior has driven from Broomfield to the Colorado Republicans’ Aurora field office once a week to light a fire on the telephone keypad.

During one 10-hour shift a couple weeks ago, Mowery said, he blazed through 1,693 phone calls. It’s the field office’s record.

The vast majority of those calls go unanswered, but the dialers leave voice mails and keep plugging along until they get the rare live undecided voter. In the final days of the campaign, “it tends to be a positive reaction,” Mowery says. “Most people just want to tell you if they voted or not,” and few are still undecided.

The phone-banking operation was humming Saturday afternoon on the seventh floor of an Aurora office building, with the focus shifting to nudging Republicans who hadn’t yet returned their ballots. Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call and Coffman himself were dialing calls, as Coffman has done most days during the campaign.Read more…

Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, speaks to volunteers in a supporter’s Highlands Ranch garage before the group headed out on a final weekend push on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Jon Murray, The Denver Post)

HIGHLANDS RANCH — It can be lonely being a Democrat in Douglas County, where few if any party field offices dot the suburban landscape. But a temporary operation sprung up Saturday morning in Don and Barbara Hall’s garage at the end of a subdivision cul-de-sac.

At the start of a final-weekend push before Tuesday’s election, congressional candidate Andrew Romanoff’s campaign returned to the Highlands Ranch home that hosted its first house party in the area, in early 2013. This year, two staffers (one for the Romanoff campaign, the other here to help U.S. Sen. Mark Udall’s re-election) are staying in their basement. The Halls, led by Barbara’s Democratic activism, long have helped out campaigns.

“I love Highlands Ranch,” Hall said, “but I do not like the fact that it’s so heavily Republican that we do not have a voice,” with Republican registrants in the county outnumbering Democrats more than 2-to-1.

The spooky commercial, entitled “Agenda,” embraces the spirit of the Halloween season, painting Romanoff as the villain. The ad depicts him as an evil, aggressive, zombie-like creature bent on pushing his extreme health care agenda onto Coloradans if elected.

Pointing to Romanoff’s past campaign ads as well as his association with the Affordable Care Act, the commercial warns viewers of hidden plans. The ad was released just two days before the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee decided to redistribute $1.4 million originally intended to boost Romanoff in the final weeks before the election.

Democrats have been up this cycle with an aesthetically pleasing, but hard-hitting ad illustrating Rep. Mike Coffman’s past support of measures that would outlaw most forms of abortion and common forms of birth control.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s ad, “Undeniable,” uses Coffman’s handwritten responses from a 2008 questionnaire to respond to its own claims.

Claims:

1. Coffman supported the 2008 Personhood amendment that would outlaw many forms of birth control

When Coffman ran for the CD6 in 2008 he submitted a questionnaire from Colorado Right to Life, a Colorado based pro-life organization, answering “yes” to all seven questions posed from Right to Life including, “Do you support the 2008 Colorado Personhood Amendment?”

The 2008 amendment was titled Amendment 48, and it would have changed the Colorado state constitution by, “Defining the term ‘person’ to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as ‘person’ is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law.”

Several new TV ads have hit the air in the last week in the hotly contested 6th Congressional District race between U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff.

I’ll take a brief look at three: a Romanoff ad that accuses Coffman of having a disregard for paycheck fairness issues, a Coffman ad attacking Romanoff for his campaign conduct and being a spendy liberal, and an outside group’s ad praising Coffman for being one of a handful of Republicans supporting a gay-friendly non-discrimination bill.

Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff is pushing back against speculation he’s failing to catch fire in his campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman.

First came weeks of judgments from national pundits who speculated that the Republican-leaning climate this year was one factor keeping Romanoff from catching fire. Last week, Politico labeled Romanoff a “fading star” among much-hyped congressional candidates this year. And on Friday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which spent $1.8 million on the race in recent weeks, pulled back on $1.4 million in ad reservations for the final two weeks. Instead, it shifted its spending to rescue Democratic incumbents in other states — a potentially ominous sign for Romanoff, as Republicans crowed.

But the signs aren’t all bad for Romanoff in the race, which has been seen as the state’s most competitive congressional contest despite a lack of public polling.

Candidates from three U.S. House districts debated on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, at the Metro North Chamber of Commerce’s forum in Thornton. From right are George Leing, Rep. Jared Polis, Don Ytterberg, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Rep. Mike Coffman and Andrew Romanoff. (Jon Murray, The Denver Post)

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s suggestion of an alternative to the federal gas tax to help pay for road projects drew criticism from fellow Rep. Jared Polis Tuesday morning during a breakfast debate involving six candidates. They are seeking U.S. House seats in the 2nd, 6th and 7th congressional districts.

An interesting dynamic played out on stage during the Metro North Chamber of Commerce’s debate in Thornton: Coffman, the only Republican incumbent and the only incumbent locked in a tight race, faced what seemed like a Democratic tag-team effort between his opponent, Andrew Romanoff, Polis and Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

The gas tax, which hasn’t been increased since 1993, was the focus of the first question by moderator Floyd Ciruli, a political consultant. The gas tax has particular resonance in the north Denver suburbs and northern Colorado because of the need for widening and other fixes along the congested I-25 corridor.

Ciruli asked if Congress should increase the tax to deal with mounting highway needs. Another factor is that vehicles have gotten more fuel-efficient. Read more…

In a move that Republicans say is ominous for Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee no longer plans to spend $1.4 million on ad time it reserved on Denver TV stations for the campaign’s final two weeks.

Instead, the DCCC is focusing its money on Democratic incumbents newly under attack by outside Republican groups, which sunk $4.2 million on new ad buys Thursday. But the DCCC still is supporting Romanoff’s challenge of U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman next week by chipping in money to expand the campaign’s own ad buy, the DCCC and Romanoff’s campaign say, and by supporting its field operations.

The DCCC says it still views the race as winnable for Romanoff — a rare Democratic challenger with an opportunity to flip a Republican seat — and already has spent a lot to support him. But the obvious upshot of its decisions is that he’s now lower on the DCCC’s priority list.

“National Democrats have clearly given up on Andrew Romanoff,” suggested Tyler Q. Houlton, a spokesman for the DCCC’s counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committeee.

Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff again outraised U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman during the third quarter in suburban Denver’s competitive 6th Congressional District race, according to announcements by their campaigns Thursday.

But Coffman is sitting pretty on a serious pile of cash — about $1 million more than Romanoff.

Less than four weeks before the Nov. 4 election — and less than a week before clerks mail out ballots to voters — Coffman’s campaign said he had $1.7 million in his campaign account. That’s as of the end of the July 1 to Sept. 30 reporting period. The campaigns’ quarterly finance reports are due Wednesday to the Federal Elections Commission, so we only have the top-line numbers announced by the campaigns.

Romanoff continued to edge Coffman in fundraising, receiving $1.1 million — an amount his campaign says is a record contribution total for a Colorado congressional candidate during a single pre-election quarterly reporting period. Coffman raised about $855,000. Because Romanoff hit the airwaves hard and often during the period, his campaign ended the period with just $670,000 in its account.

A week before ballots go out to voters, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman and Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff will meet up twice this week for televised debates.

The 6th Congressional District candidates, locked in one of the tightest congressional races in the nation, have met in three formal debates, the most recent on Sept. 23 in The Denver Post’s auditorium. On Monday night, they’ll duel live at 7 p.m. on Channel 20 in a half-hour debate hosted at 9News studios.

And on Thursday afternoon, Coffman and Romanoff will debate in a half-hour event hosted by CBS4 and public television station Channel 12. That matchup will air at 7 p.m. Friday on Channel 12, followed by a debate between 4th Congressional District candidates Republican Ken Buck and Democrat Vic Meyers.

Lynn Bartels thinks politics is like sports but without the big salaries and protective cups. The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog has named her one of Colorado's best political reporters and tweeters.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.